The Bloody Eye

Начало книги

A combination of stench and hollow percussion awoke Yddith. At first, she dreamed she was dancing to muted drums, accompanied by the gourds and bone rattles used in druid ceremonies. Then she realized there were hoofbeats in counterpoint with something else. Scrapes, knocks, clacks, clicks, bumps, thumps, and clatter vibrated through the night. It was a cacophony of bone instruments, but it was also more.

Underneath the eerie percussion was a low, pulsing murmur vacillating between a whistle and a worn organ pipe leaking air. It might have been the wind, but it seemed to offer uneven groans and whimpers in the midst of the mysterious percussion. Yddith grimaced. It might have been the wind, but the wind usually carried away the stench of the privies. Instead, this wind was permeated with the fetid, smothering perfume of decay. She had smelled nothing like this since the days of the fever.

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